Food Channel on School Website

Summary of the digital activity:

Food education and healthy lifestyles are incredibly important to Washingborough Academy. Their unique Food Education curriculum teaches the children about the foods they eat, how to cook and the importance of food socially, culturally and environmentally - as well as it’s positive effect food can have on our own physical and mental health and well-being. This approach to food education is communicated through their ‘Food Channel’ on the school website.

What are the benefits/outcomes of this activity?

The Washingborough Academy website includes information on their food education ethos, and their Food Channel includes many films they have created and uploaded to their YouTube channel. This enables the school to promote its ethos to parents and the community, and share the food experiences that the children take part in. The use of films, interviews and content created by the pupils enables a personal engagement with parents and a showcase for the work of the school. Key areas that the website covers include:

TastED

Early years and KS1 pupils learn about food through TastEd which provides a fun and exciting platform for children to have the confidence to try new foods and recognise the role that all of our senses play when eating. Washingborough Academy have pioneered this sensory based food education programme and the information on the website outlines the approach that the school takes to exploring food.

Growing

The school has 300m² kitchen garden, raised beds, a Lincolnshire Heritage orchard, an apiary and fee-range chickens to engage the children in the issues around sustainability and sourcing local food. The school has filmed some of their seasonal growing activities that are  then uploaded to the Food Channel to share their work in the garden.

Snack shack and recipes

The school runs a Snack Shack where, each week, a group of children prepare a healthy snack that is then sold a break time on a Wednesday.  This not only provides pupils with healthy food, it also enables them to learn fundamental life skills and develop an excellent awareness of food and the food choices they will make. The Snack Shack recipes, cooking lessons, social media clips and more are uploaded to the school Food Channel on YouTube.

The website is also supported by social media, with regular stories posted on the school Facebook and Twitter feeds. These complement each other in providing a range of communication channels to parents.

Top Teacher Tips

• Set up pages on the school website to promote your food education work
• Create a school YouTube channel to host films that the school makes - these can then be easily embedded on your website or shared on social media
• Give key staff the access and passwords as administrators of your YouTube and social media channels so it is easy for them to add content
• Set a regular rouitine, reminder or diary prompt to add new content so that the website stays fresh
• Always think of what interesting story you could share from the food education work you do in school - recording activities, interveiws, growing tips and recipes
• Involve the pupils! They have the creative ideas and presentation skills that will engage parents and the school community